Dawn had crept into the room, grey and ghostly. He shivered and looked round. His letter, unfinished, lay there on the table. Everything seemed cold, desolate, lifeless. He got up and stretched himself, for he felt stiff and cramped. Scarce worth while, now, to go to bed! He walked over to the window and looked out into the breaking day. The world seemed very old and cheerless. Was it the chill of approaching age in his own blood, he wondered, that made him find it so? He smiled a strange, dim little smile. Best, then, to sit by the fire and doze! He came back to the table, and leaning over it, buried his face in his hands. THE END Transcriber’s Notes: ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). ――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. ――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Garden God, by Forrest Reid